Health and fun fair! “Some tips on how to organize a healthy food festival in your school”

A great way to help the students create a healthy relationship with food is by including them in planning a food fair or a food festival. Let them initiate and create the festival, and explain the concept to others. Teaching them about what people eat, where the food comes from, and how it affects them and the environment is the one thing. Putting the idea into action is quite another!

Many ancillary ideas may come up in the process, like workshops on creating compost from kitch-en waste and growing your own vegetable garden.

You are the manager. This is what you will have to consider:

1. Spread the idea. Announce the event 6–8 months in advance. Get the staff and membership excited! Assemble a core team of volunteers
2. Make logistical decisions immediately. Set the date and time, at least 6 months before the fair.
3. Make your event unique. Find a motto —  for example, “Harvest Festival” or “Health and Fitness Food.” Will you have demos, lectures, hands-on services, food cooked by many people, games etc.?
4. Choose a charity that will receive most of the funds or make clear what you will use the money for. Use sponsor money to organize the fair, discuss prices for different groups (students, parents, guests).
5. Allow your coordinators the freedom to choose subtopics, good tasks and trust them. Students could also be coordinators. Meet with them to collect information. Maintain a folder for each of the planning areas.
6. Create an attractive flier for promotion purposes.
7. Develop an agenda. Update it regularly.
8. Define the roles of the coordinators. Finding sponsors. Coordinating with parents. Information and Press. Organization of the venue (tables, electricity, water). Trash disposal and management (careful separation etc.). Organization of side events. Etc.
9. Again: Start small. Become bigger next year. Students learn from students. Parents learn from parents. Staff learn from staff. And you learn from experience.